Scammer! Possibly the best, most tangible example in recent times of just what a hypocritical bunch of scammers this lot really are. Shapps, you mug. LOL. Why are you so desperate for money that you do things like this? Wouldn’t surprise me to find you are involved in all sorts! Ah, how different we all are once we exit the stage!

I know. Not that I expect many people have noticed, nor care. However, for anyone who has noticed, or does care, I am here to let you know that I plan on making this place a little more active.

Over on TF they are reporting on Kim Dotcoms latest pledge to bring Mega back, in a new, infinitely more robust form. There seems to be a fair bit of hyperbole in there, but it looks promising nonetheless. On the fly encryption for downloads, and ” …a massive global network. All non-US hosters will be able to connect servers & bandwidth” Also Tweeting ;

The ACTA treaty is coming to its showdown two and a half weeks from today. The vote on the floor of the European Parliament is where the treaty lives or dies. But the next important event takes place as early as this Thursday. For reasons I wrote on TorrentFreak in my last article, ACTA lives or dies globally with the vote in the European Parliament. Therefore, that’s where all our energy should be directed to preserve the liberties of the net and ourselves. It is true that there are other horrific backroom deals in the process – the Trans-Pacific Partnership, notably – but a visible defeat of ACTA due to public outrage will be sure to have effects on TPP, as well as on all other attempts to legislate some middlemen’s right to profit at the expense of our civil liberties. The opposite also holds true: if ACTA passes in the European Parliament despite us having held rallies across pretty much all of Europe, the damage to democracy, to the net, and to our civil liberties is going to take two decades to repair. Such a defeat would be a concession that the European Parliament is not an elected body of representatives, but a doormat for so-called “corporate stakeholders” – the monopolists of yesterday who are threatened by our next generation of entrepreneurs at every level. So this is it. Man your barricades. The ACTA approval or rejection process in the European Parliament consists of a so-called “responsible committee” recommending the European Parliament as a whole to accept or reject the treaty. All proposals have such a responsible committee. In the case of ACTA, the committee is “International Trade”, known by its abbreviation, INTA. But before INTA makes its recommendation to accept or reject, four other committees have left recommendations to INTA from their own respective point of view, and INTA is expected (but not required) to weigh their recommendations into INTA’s final recommendation to European Parliament. The four other committees are Industry (ITRE), Development (DEVE), Legal Affairs (JURI), and Civil Liberties (LIBE). All four of them have voted to recommend INTA to recommend a rejection in turn (yes, the roll of red tape is quite long). Meanwhile, the proposed decision on INTA’s table is to recommend a rejection of ACTA, but the corporate monopoly interests are fighting harder by the hour to change this into an adoption. Therefore, we must fight, too. INTA makes its decision this Thursday – on June 21, around 10:00 Brussels time. This recommendation will weigh very heavily on Parliament’s final vote. In this game, the proponents of ACTA are currently trying to get the vote postponed, seeing that public opinion is currently horribly against it. (This is politics as usual – it’s pretty much like the ACTA opponents were trying to stall a vote before the public had woken up to what was going on.) This game is far from over – party lines in the European Parliament can and do shift at the last minute, and the individual voting Members of the European Parliament are not bound to toe those party lines anyway. So some people are trying to push for an outright adoption of ACTA by the European Parliament. The person leading that ratification effort in INTA is the Swedish Christofer Fjellner, who has tabled an amendment to INTA’s meeting – an amendment to change the decision to recommend European Parliament to accept ACTA. Some important people have also invited themselves to INTA’s meeting in order to sway the vote. The public can’t do that, of course. But we can contact the Members of European Parliament before the meeting – and that’s exactly what we need to do. To make that easier, I have set up a mailing list at europarl-inta@falkvinge.net that goes to all the MEPs on the INTA committee. If you want inspiration of what to send, I have a sample letter over at my own blog. Above all, remember to be courteous as a citizen voicing your concern, and being clear that you urge them to vote for a rejection. (You don’t need to live in Europe to do this – ACTA is a global concern.) For those on the outside of Parliament, the institution seems like an impenetrable fortress. Once you get on the inside, though, you realize that citizens’ voices are heard very clearly. It’s our job to make that happen between now and the final vote on the floor on the European Parliament on July 3. Send a mail to INTA right now, and then, let’s build an overall showdown campaign between the INTA vote on June 21 and Parliament’s vote on July 3, spanning all the major tech sites, to make sure the citizen outcry becomes the stuff of legend for decades to come in the European Parliament.

The government today published a draft version of a bill that, if signed into law in its current form, would force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mobile phone network providers in Britain to install ‘black boxes’ in order to collect and store information on everyone’s internet and phone activity, and give the police the ability to self-authorise access to this information. However, the Home Office failed to explain whether or not companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter will be brought under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), and how they intend to deal with HTTPS encryption.

Faith in the integrity of HTTPS encryption is what makes online banking and the entire e-commerce industry possible, and Google uses it to secure its Gmail service, as do most webmail providers. The need for easy access to Gmail has been one of the Home Office’s primary justifications for the Communications Bill, but technology experts are dubious as to whether it is possible to technically and lawfully break HTTPS on a nationwide scale. At this morning’s Home Office briefing, Director of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism Charles Farr was asked about how the black box technology would handle HTTPS encryption. His only response was: “It will.”

At a press and MP briefing at Parliament today, Julian Huppert MP said that he couldn’t believe the bill could even be put before the House in its current form. David Davis MP remarked that, given that the RIPA process is already “a disgrace”, the Home Office should be introducing a bill that introduces warrant requirements to RIPA rather than making it even easier for the police to access citizens’ communications data. He also revealed that David Maclean, “the most right-wing politician the Home Office ever saw”, will be chairing the committee on the bill.

Dr Gus Hosein, Executive Director of Privacy International, said: “In the UK, we’ve historically operated under the presumption that the government has no business peering into the lives of citizens unless there is good reason to – that people are innocent until proven guilty. This legislation would reverse that presumption and fundamentally change the relationship between citizen and state, and their relationship with their internet and mobile service providers. Yet there are still big question marks over whether Facebook and Google will be brought under RIPA, and how far the government is willing to go in undermining internet security in order to fulfil its insatiable desire for data.”

Currently it would appear more of a US issue, however it is inevitable that what the administration does there, will follow here, in the UK. We have the same government, it would appear, seperated by geography and little else these days. Just look at the Olympics 2012 military colab.

Anyway below is the article reposted verbatim from EFF. More as we find it. Now imagine hacking these drones… and what one could do with THAT kind of botnet ;)

Help EFF Find Out How Your Local Police Agency is Using Drones

Since last month, when EFF released a list of the sixty-odd public agencies that have already received from the FAA approval to fly domestic drones, the issue of drone surveillance has reached front and center in many Americans’ mind. Yet barely any information is known about what law enforcement agencies plan to do with these unmanned flying vehicles. So we want your help to gather this information into one place.

The groups listed by the FAA included about two dozen local police agencies, but we expect this number to grow rapidly in the coming weeks and months. In February, Congress passed a bill mandating the FAA authorize drones to public agencies if they can prove they can fly them safely. More recently, the Department of Homeland Security, which was already handing out grants to local law enforcement agencies, announced a program to further “facilitate and accelerate the adoption” of drones by local police agencies. In addition, last month the FAA announced it had established new (though undisclosed) procedures to allow more law enforcement agencies quicker access to fly drones.

The $4 million Air-based Technologies Program, which will test and evaluate small, unmanned aircraft systems, is designed to be a “middleman” between drone manufacturers and first-responder agencies “before they jump into the pool,” said John Appleby, a manager in the DHS Science and Technology Directorate’s division of borders and maritime security.

This is, or will become, a controversy all over the United States. From Seattle to Miami, Tennessee to Atlanta, and everywhere in between, local towns will soon grapple over the privacy dangers drones will create.

Given Congress’ inaction on privacy issues, and the fact that the FAA has never regulated privacy issues, we believe activism at the local level is the best way to stop drone surveillance.

What you can do

The FAA has so far not released any information on which model of drone or how many drones each public entity flies. We also don’t have much information on the type of data these drones will collect. So we need to find this information out.

We’ve made a simple form for the questions we want these police agencies to answer. We need you to call your local police department and ask them these questions. Check your local police department’s website for the “Public Inquiries” or “Community Relations” contact, and call or e-mail them these questions. Make sure to let us know your Twitter handle if you’d like us to tweet you a thank you from the @EFF Twitter feed.

This is just the first step. Once we’ve collected the data, we will release it and tell you how you can contact your local municipal government to demand that they ban law enforcement drones or install robust privacy safeguards that will protect citizens from unwanted—and unconstitutional—surveillance.

No matter…. Use any one of the following links to continue to TPB unfettered. There will be more where these came from. For every one site ISPs / Gov manage to block access to the community will create another ten. The internet was designed to be resilient against terrorism. It is a fundamental part of the design of the internet, that if a route is broken, it is trivial to create another.

Having originally resisted the notion that it should stop its subscribers sharing copyright works, in a little under 4 years Ireland’s ISP Eircom has come completely about-face. Not only did it come to a private agreement with the music industry to implement a 3 strikes-style regime, but now its asking other ISPs to join them in doing so. It’s lonely being this kind of ‘pioneer’, especially when it puts your company at a commercial disadvantage.

In 2008, the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) took legal action against Eircom, Ireland’s largest ISP.

The so-called Big Four labels – EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner – wanted the ISP to install proactive filtering technology aimed at stopping unauthorized file-sharing among Eircom’s customers. Eircom refused, IRMA sued, and the case ended up in court – but not for very long.

At the 11th hour in February 2009 the companies came to an agreement which would see Eircom introduce a graduated response system for dealing with errant subscribers.

However, Eircom needed something in return. The agreement had left Eircom in the unenviable position of being the only ISP in Ireland with an official policy of disconnecting customers on the mere allegations of the music industry.

But the first recording industry target, ISP UPC, refused to play ball and after being sued it eventually won its case.

While the labels did ‘reward’ Eircom’s compliance with the MusicHub service, the product has been labeled lacklaster and when PaidContent asked how many users the service had, Eircom refused to tell them.

So with Eircom now at a commercial disadvantage and no immediate sign that the industry will force any other ISP to implement 3 strikes, the ISP is being left to go it alone. In making the best out of a bad situation it’s now describing what it is doing as an “obligation”.

“Eircom is of the view that these obligations are part of a role that all responsible companies must serve,” Eircom’s consumer managing director Stephen Beynon said.

Eircom insist that they want to respect their customers’ right to privacy but from fighting IRMA in 2008/9, they now believe that other ISPs should do as they have done, and do a deal with the recording group.

“We think that it would be better for everyone if the industry and the rights-holders found a way to tackle this problem. It’s not going to go away. The current situation is not ideal but we could create something that moved the issue forward if we worked together,” Beynon added.

Or in other words, the water’s great, come on in.

Beynon says that Eircom believes it has an obligation to uphold the law when illegal activity is brought to its attention but it’s taking the word of a private P2P tracking company as final and there is no judicial oversight, something that causes controversy in every jurisdiction it’s suggested.

It’s interesting to note that if Eircom had held its ground back in 2008 when it was sued by the labels to proactively filter subscriber upload data, by now it would have heard Europe’s highest court dismiss what they were being asked to do as illegal.

Had they known that in 2009, would they have felt so compelled to do the 3 strikes deal?